DSpace at VNU: Beginning EFL teachers' beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices

This article was downloaded by: [University of Strathclyde] On: 04 October 2014, At: 01:14 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Teacher Development: An international journal of teachers' professional development Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtde20 Beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices a b Ly Ngoc Khanh Pham & M Obaidul Hamid a University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam b School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Published online: 22 May 2013 To cite this article: Ly Ngoc Khanh Pham & M Obaidul Hamid (2013) Beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices, Teacher Development: An international journal of teachers' professional development, 17:2, 246-264, DOI: 10.1080/13664530.2012.753947 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2012.753947 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden Terms & Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions Teacher Development, 2013 Vol 17, No 2, 246–264, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2012.753947 Beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices Ly Ngoc Khanh Phama and M Obaidul Hamidb* a Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam; bSchool of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (Received 15 October 2011; final version received 23 November 2012) Motivated by the scarcity of research that examines the impact of teacher beliefs on their actual practices in Vietnam, this study investigated the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning behaviours in terms of questioning purposes, content focus, students’ cognitive level, wording and syntax Thirteen beginning EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers working at Vietnam National University participated in the study Qualitative data collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire survey and classroom observation were analysed using qualitative content analysis Findings show that although there was a general congruence between teachers’ beliefs and practices, there were discrepancies – from moderate to substantial – between what the teachers believed and what they actually did in the class with respect to the four specified features While much more research is required to understand the links between EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices about quality questions in Vietnam and other EFL contexts, it is expected that the insights will contribute to the literature on teacher questions, beliefs and practices Keywords: teacher beliefs; teaching practice; quality questions; English as a foreign language; beginning teachers; Vietnam Introduction Teachers’ beliefs have a significant influence on their classroom practices Pajares (1992) indicated that in challenging circumstances it is their beliefs, more than the knowledge they might have received from training, that guide their teaching This relationship between teacher beliefs and practices has been under scrutiny through a number of studies in different disciplines over the past several decades For example, Ernest (1989) conducted a study on mathematics teachers; Hedrick, Harmon, and Linerode (2004) explored teachers’ beliefs and practices in vocabulary instruction; and Palak and Walls (2009) investigated teachers’ beliefs and technology practices In second language (L2) teaching, Basturkmen (2012) reviewed 17 studies, all of which dealt with correspondence between teacher beliefs and practices However, it would be remiss if teachers’ beliefs and practices are not explored in relation to their questioning behaviours given the importance of teacher questions in classroom discourse (Brualdi 1998; Cullen 1998; Long and Sato 1983; Walsh 2011; White and Lightbown 1984) Although there has been *Corresponding author Email: m.hamid@uq.edu.au Ó 2013 Teacher Development Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Teacher Development 247 some research on teacher questions in L2 teaching (e.g Breen et al 2001; Brock 1986; Cundale 2001; Mitchell 1994; Thornbury 1996), not many studies have investigated the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their practices with a focus on teacher questioning Moreover, this research is scanty in EFL (English as a foreign language) countries where English is increasingly becoming dominant in their education systems In response to the need for research on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and questioning practices, the study reported in this paper examined EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their actual questioning behaviours in the EFL classroom in Vietnam The empirical insights are expected to add to our understanding of the belief–practice relationships in the EFL class Since 1986, when Vietnam adopted the economic liberalisation policy, and, more recently, in the wake of globalisation, English teaching has spread widely in the country The putative role of English in human capital development in a globalised world (see Hamid and Honan 2012) led to the adoption of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Vietnamese tertiary education including the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University (VNU), where the present study was located CLT classrooms usually aim at meaningful communication which requires the use of referential and clarification questions, rather than display questions (Cullen 1998; Cundale 2001) However, Vietnamese teachers and students are likely to aim at retention of knowledge and prefer display questions because memorisation is highly valued in the local academic culture (Lewis and McCook 2002) Moreover, under the influence of a grammar- and reading-based examination system, Vietnamese teachers usually test students’ recall and give them practice drills Therefore, the present study would shed light on whether the principles of CLT have had an impact on teacher questioning practices in the EFL class Teachers’ beliefs Until the mid-1970s, beliefs as well as thinking processes had been overlooked by researchers under the influence of behaviourist psychology (Xing 2009) However, Fenstermacher (1978) predicted that the study of beliefs would be the focus of teacher effectiveness research, marking a shift in the educational research paradigm within which teachers are now considered decision makers, not merely doers (Cundale 2001) As a result, teacher thinking processes have been investigated through such forms as beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, perspectives and implicit theories, to name a few (see S Borg 2003, 2011) Yet, there might be confusion about these constructs in general and the concept of beliefs in particular because the term ‘belief’ has not been used consistently in research In the present study, beliefs are defined by drawing a line between ‘beliefs’ and ‘knowledge’ Instead of providing a fixed definition, M Borg (2001) distinguished them based on truth element Belief, according to him, ‘is a mental state which has as its content a proposition that is accepted as true by the individual holding it’ (186) This feature makes beliefs ‘deeply personal’ and ‘not affected by persuasion’ (Pajares 1992, 309) Thus, as Nespor (1987) noted, belief systems not require group consensus for their validity On the contrary, knowledge is defined as being true in some external sense Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 248 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid Beliefs and behaviours Studies have shown that although teachers may have the same knowledge base, they might follow considerably different teaching methods (Ashari 1994; Ernest 1989) What underlies this difference between knowledge and practice is most likely the beliefs that teachers hold, as research has indicated that beliefs have an impact on teacher judgments and classroom behaviours (Pajares 1992) Compared to knowledge, beliefs are stronger predictors of teacher practices since in difficult situations, for instance, ‘cognitive and information processing strategies not work … , and the teacher is uncertain of what information is needed or what behaviour is appropriate’ (Pajares 1992, 311) To examine relationships between beliefs and practices more closely, Breen et al (2001) conducted a study with 18 Australian ESL (English as a second language) teachers, revealing that these teachers’ behaviours were identifiable with a set of principles, illustrating the reflexivity of beliefs in teaching practices Similarly, Cundale’s (2001) study involving two language teachers in Mexico showed that their beliefs in CLT were corroborated in their questioning practices in the class However, research also indicates that teachers’ beliefs are often inconsistent with their actual classroom behaviours, especially in the case of teachers who have just begun their teaching careers (see Basturkmen 2012 for a review) For example, Simmons et al (1999) conducted a three-year longitudinal study involving 161 beginning mathematics teachers Using classroom surveys, interviews and classroom observations, the researchers found that although the participants reported to have followed a student-centred approach to teaching, in reality, their practice was still dominated by teacher-centred methods Thus, the relationships between teachers’ beliefs and actual practices not demonstrate discernible patterns, which prompted Breen et al (2001) to invite more research to explore the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their classroom behaviours The present study was designed to investigate these relationships with a focus on questioning practice Teacher questions and quality questions Teacher questions are tied to different pedagogical factors such as the teaching context, teachers’ purposes, students’ learning outcomes and corrective feedback Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2004) classified teacher questions into three groups based on their pedagogical motives They explained that teachers ask questions not only ‘for cognitive/intellectual reasons (concerning the subject matter of the lesson) but also for emotional/social reasons (to cater for different personalities) and for managerial reasons (to minimise bad behaviour and to keep students on task)’ (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2004, 238) Also questioning is a multi-stage process, as described in the framework called Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking (QUILT) (Walsh and Sattes 2005), which includes preparing and presenting questions, prompting and processing student responses, and reflecting on questioning practice The focus of the present study is quality questions which are ‘purposeful, engaging and consequential’ (Walsh and Sattes 2005, 23) Walsh and Sattes (2005, 23) pointed out four characteristics of quality questions which: (i) promote one or more carefully defined instructional purposes; (ii) focus on important content; (iii) facilitate thinking at a stipulated cognitive level; and (iv) communicate clearly what is being asked Teacher Development 249 Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Promoting instructional purposes Teacher questions are linked to the instructional context such as recitation and discussion (Walsh and Sattes 2005) The former is found in a teacher-fronted classroom where teachers dominate classroom discourse following the IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) model (Hall 1998) In this case, teacher questions help students to review the lesson, check their understanding and provide opportunities for drill and practice In discussion, on the other hand, teachers, as facilitators or pace-keepers, raise one open-ended question and let students carry on the discussion Whatever the instructional context, teachers should be clear about the purposes for asking questions As Crowe and Stanford (2010, 36) asserted, by posing questions for a wide range of purposes, teachers can ‘extend and enrich high level critical thinking and learning naturally within their classrooms’ Focusing important content Teachers are likely to have different perceptions about the content focus of the lesson (Walsh and Sattes 2005) To categorise the content focus systematically, teacher questions in this paper are aligned with four kinds of knowledge: factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and meta-cognitive knowledge constituting the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson et al 2001): • Factual knowledge is knowledge of discrete, including isolated content elements like terminologies and specific details • Conceptual knowledge includes knowledge of theories, models and classifications • Procedural knowledge includes knowledge of skills and methods to perform tasks • Meta-cognitive knowledge includes strategy use and students’ self-knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses for task completion Facilitating thinking Contrary to the claim that deciding on the content focus is the most difficult part in question design (Walsh and Sattes 2005), developing students’ cognitive level appears to be the most challenging task for Vietnamese teachers in questioning practice To substantiate this, we may refer to the six cognitive levels (i.e., remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating) and associated cognitive processes (e.g., recalling in remembering and planning and producing in creating) Communicating what is being asked There has been little research on students’ interpretation of teacher questions, but one thing that cannot be denied is the importance of wording and syntax in questions According to Walsh and Sattes (2005, 47), a quality question should be ‘clear and concise’ To achieve this aim, teachers must consider the wording of questions to provide the intended meaning avoiding ambiguity Similarly, in an EFL context such as Vietnam, where the language input is not readily available outside the 250 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 classroom, teachers ought to take grammaticality issues into consideration in formulating questions Beginning teachers and their questioning beliefs and practices Beginning teachers are those who have less than four years of teaching experience (Tienken, Goldberg, and DiRocco 2010) According to McCann, Johannessen, and Ricca (2005, xiii), beginning teachers confront ‘many challenges and difficulties’ resulting from their relationships with students, parents, colleagues, and supervisors (see also Farrell 2009) Heavy workload and underdeveloped time management skills may cause their stress Novice teachers may also have doubts about their content and pedagogical knowledge base In particular, beginning teachers experience inadequacy of knowledge and thus difficulty in questioning For instance, in their longitudinal study, Tienken, Goldberg, and DiRocco (2010) focused on the differences between experienced and novice teachers in terms of the frequency of productive questions that they asked Ninety-eight participants, including 60 experienced and 38 novice teachers, were involved in the research Findings indicated that the number of productive questions produced by beginning teachers was significantly low Similarly, Burgess’s (2005) study highlighted the weaknesses of beginning teachers in questioning He investigated beliefs about effective questioning in eight major areas including planning questions, wait time, questioning roles and question types, responsibility for encouraging, asking, showing interest and sustaining questioning practice Twenty six in-service teachers, 62 pre-service teachers, and 18 teaching assistants participated in the study Data analysis revealed that the group with more practice and experience practised the above questioning routines more often than their novice counterparts Focusing on these characteristics, the present study addressed the following research questions: (1) What are beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions? (2) How can we describe their actual questioning behaviours? (3) Are beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices congruent? Methodology Participants Thirteen beginning tertiary EFL teachers participated in the study Nine of them taught in Division I of the English Teacher Education Department at the University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) at VNU The other four teachers taught in the General English Division within International School at VNU All participants were females and were in their mid-20s Their teaching experience ranged between two and three years Data collection instruments The first research question on teachers’ beliefs about quality questions was addressed using an open-ended bilingual (English and Vietnamese) questionnaire survey consisting of 14 items (see Appendix for the English version) based on Teacher Development 251 Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Walsh and Sattes’s (2005) framework of quality questions Next, to explore teachers’ actual questioning practices, video recordings of classroom instruction were used Six ULIS teachers who participated in the survey were requested to record one 55-minute lesson each The video files were transcribed verbatim and teacher questions were highlighted in the transcriptions for subsequent analysis Data analysis Fifteen questionnaires were emailed to 15 teachers working at VNU, and 13 of them returned the completed questionnaires Ten of the teachers responded to the questions in English and three questionnaires had responses in Vietnamese, which were later translated into English Content analysis was used to analyse the data Two phases of coding – initial coding and second-level coding (Dörnyei 2007) – were undertaken Initially, keywords in teacher responses were highlighted and grouped together, following Krippendorff’s (2004, 180) ‘indices and symptoms construct’ within which counting frequencies of words, pairs of words, co-occurrences of symbols, patterns of references, or relationships within texts has indicative functions For instance, teachers may have cited many verbs to denote their purposes of asking questions, but all of them aimed to elicit students’ response These categories were then aligned with the participants’ teaching philosophy and other background information so that underlying factors influencing teachers’ beliefs and practices could be uncovered The same procedure was used for the video data Finally, in order to understand whether there was correspondence between teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices, insights generated from the questionnaire data and the classroom video data were compared Convergences as well as divergences between them were noted and systematically demonstrated under each trait of quality questions Findings The survey as well as classroom observations provided insights into the teachers’ questioning practices in the Vietnamese context Five of the six classes video recorded taught reading lessons while the last one taught listening Both types of lesson had three stages: lead-in, while-task and post-task The lessons were dominated by teacher talk in which the number of questions asked varied between 127 and 204 in each of the six 55-minute lessons Teachers’ purposes in asking questions Teachers’ beliefs The questionnaire data showed that nine teachers asked questions to check and double-check students’ memory as well as understanding of both the previous and the current lessons Seven of them wanted to get their students ready before the lesson by raising their interest, giving them prompts and motivating them to solve problems Only two teachers claimed that their questions aimed to foster students to learn and think critically There were a number of factors that drove teachers to set the above purposes for their questions All of them mentioned lesson objectives as their priority For 252 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid example, Mai (all names are pseudonyms) noted: ‘My questions are designed to make sure the students understand my lessons and are capable to move up.’ In addition, two thirds of the teachers noted that they took the institution’s policies into consideration in deciding on the purposes of questions, as, for instance, Anh observed: ‘Sometimes I have to have my students pay more attention to some language points than the others because they were decided beforehand by the institution to be the focus of the exams.’ On the other hand, Hai indicated a link between the target proficiency level for students and her questioning practice: Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 For example, the level of proficiency freshmen at my university aim to achieve is B1 [Common European Framework of Reference for Languages – CEFR] Thus, I tend to raise questions to check if students understand my teaching points and know what is required of them The impact of the teaching approach/philosophy on questioning was explicitly noted by six teachers who asserted that their teaching was influenced by CLT Three other teachers also pointed to CLT, although indirectly, whose questions aimed at creating communicative interactions in the class This is evident from Mai who stated: ‘Questioning is designed to aim at preparing interesting lessons where interaction between teacher and students can be clearly witnessed as much as possible.’ The dominance of this approach was probably due to the fact that they all received the same education and training from VNU with a strong focus on CLT Apart from CLT, there were references to the socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky 1978), as five of the teachers believed that questions should scaffold students’ learning For instance, Ha posited that her questions aimed to ‘foster her students to speak’ in the class Actual practices Observation of teaching practice showed that the teachers asked questions for three main purposes The first was to highlight important information for students and almost half of the teachers’ questions were formulated in two parts: the information that the teachers wanted to draw students’ attention to and ‘Right/Ok’ at the end For example, Ha posed the following question to elicit the meaning of ‘crisp’ from her students: C R I S P Right? A pack of crisp You know the potato The slice And it is dry Very thin and dry Slice of potato is crisp, Ok? So that’s it Second, teacher questions aimed to elicit students’ responses by giving them an opportunity to express their ideas and opinions on various issues In the lead-in part, the teachers often aroused students’ interest and curiosity by posing such questions as: ‘Do you want to warm up yourself with some music?’ (Nga), or ‘What’s the theme of today’s lesson?’ (Thi) Predictably, the students frequently answered these questions in chorus In the while-task part, the teachers used questions to guide students through the lesson Taking questions as a tool, the teachers scaffolded students step-by-step (see Walsh 2001) so that they could work out their answers The following conversation between Ha and her students provides a good example: Teacher Development 253 Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 T: And number 8, the man is trying to buy a car Ok What is the woman’s recommendation? The woman’s recommendation? What is her recommendation? S: To use subway T: Ok, she suggested the man to use subway But the man say ? S: It’s so expensive T: It’s too expensive for him Ok And he’s saving up to ? Ss: To buy a car T: Ok To save up means to save, you don’t use them, to save something So number is true As can be seen in this extract, the teacher chopped the information into small pieces and led students’ reasoning to move up gradually till they reached the final answer In addition, on average the teachers spent one fifth of their questioning time on checking students’ task completion Questions such as ‘Are you ready?’, ‘Have you finished?’, and ‘Finished?’ were found in all teachers’ discourses Teacher questions also checked students’ comprehension of instruction After giving instructions to students, the teachers often asked: ‘Understand?’, ‘Clear?’ and ‘See my point?’ to monitor students’ understanding Nevertheless, the teachers were not found to wait long enough for students’ answers, or even expect to receive students’ responses but moved on to the next content: Now I want you to work in four groups Ok? And inside your group you will have to find out, as many words or expression related to these Understand? Ok, now, first I decide the groups (Thi) In the post-task section, some teachers posed questions to stimulate students’ higher order thinking, which will be discussed in the cognitive-level section Finally, teacher questions gave students the recast feedback, which is defined as ‘a reformulation of an incorrect utterance that maintains the original meaning’ (Gass and Selinker 2008, 335) The teachers repeated students’ answers with rising intonation so that they might be aware of their mistakes and self-correct, as is evident in the following extract: T: S: T: S: Do you know anything about a traditional wedding? Five person carry things from Five people? Ah, five people (Nga) Relationships between beliefs and practices The IRE pattern observed in all six classes was congruent with the recitation context deduced from the questionnaire Almost all teacher questions aimed to reinforce students’ ability to remember and understand knowledge, which was in line with their expressed intentions for posing questions However, their actual questioning practice was richer and more diverse which often scaffolded students in their attempts to comprehend and respond to teacher questions Nevertheless, teachers were not very successful in encouraging interactions among students Contrary to their intentions, classroom observations indicated the dominance of teacher talk 254 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid leaving just enough room for students to produce only short responses Examples like the following were rather common: Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 T: S: T: S: T: Ok, what about trousers? Narrow What does it mean? Narrow? What you mean by narrow trousers? Tight Tight, uh huh Some kind of trousers Ok Now move on with the accessories Gloves Flat shoes What does it mean by flat shoes? S: Giày b^et giày b^et (flat shoes in Vietnamese) _ _ T: Uh, ok, the shoes have no heels Now narrow ties  S: Cà vạt (tie) Ngan (short) Nhỏ (little) (Thi) The extract shows turn-takings between the teacher and students to work out the answer However, these are far short of the concept of interaction defined as a process that encompasses input (exposure to language), production of language (output), and feedback (Gass and Selinker 2008) Moreover, interaction cannot be a one-way process in which teachers just question and students simply produce small chunks of information In addition, only a few students were likely to be engaged in this process Ha believed that her scaffolding would prompt students to speak, or produce meaningful output, but she did not seem to make it happen in her class Thus, the participants’ expressed teaching philosophies and pedagogies, which were informed by the CLT and the socio-cultural theory, were not demonstrated through their practice in the classroom Content focus Teachers’ beliefs The content focus comprises the facts, concepts and skills that were the target of teacher questions The teachers pointed out that their questions focused on pieces of information in the text, grammar points, pronunciation, vocabulary, and the skill focus of the lesson, as enumerated by Ha, Phi, and Mai Their priority was grammar points which aligned with conceptual knowledge Ranked as the second priority, questions focusing on pieces of information fell into factual knowledge and task-performing skills into procedural knowledge Lastly, vocabulary and spelling, which also belong to conceptual knowledge, were represented in one fourth of the teachers’ responses Similar to the factors determining purposes for teacher questions, most teachers focused on the knowledge pre-determined by the curriculum For instance, Thanh emphasised: ‘It all depends on the purpose of the lesson or the task.’ Similarly, Lan wrote: ‘The aims of the lesson as specified in the syllabus help me decide the content focus.’ In addition, students’ existing proficiency levels were taken into account in teacher questioning Actual practices Among the four types of knowledge in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, factual knowledge or the knowledge of terminology was the most frequent focus of such Teacher Development 255 questions, which mainly checked students’ understanding of words, as in, for example: ‘Show business, what does it mean?’ (Nga) In addition, the majority of teacher questions aimed to direct students to specific content and details in the lesson, another type of factual knowledge, to encourage students’ task completion The following excerpt shows how Thi helped students extract the information they needed from the materials by redirecting them to factual knowledge: Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Ok, now we will check the exercise and the drawing at the same time Ok? Firstly 1920s Now what about clothes? First, long straight dress Ok It must be long Ok Now move on Uhm What about trousers? What are trousers for men? Apart from factual knowledge, procedural knowledge was also tested through teacher questions On guiding students to complete tasks, teachers first asked questions to revise or build up the skills to finish tasks For instance, to get them ready to perform the task, Nga asked her students: So from question to 7, from to 7, you write the correct letter, the corresponding letter, A, B, C or D, or F next to the statements And remember one question may have more than one answer Ok, with more than one answer Does anyone remember the technique to this kind of exercise? Linh, you remember the techniques to this kind of exercise? Linh, you remember the techniques, the ways to this kind of exercise? Conceptual knowledge was the third most common knowledge type tested by the teachers Within this category of knowledge, students were asked to classify words, as in the following example: T: S: T: S: T: S: Uh huh, woollen Now woollen, is it a noun or adjective? Adjective It’s a ? An adjective Ok And its noun is ? Wool (Thanh) Relationships between the two Both the questionnaire and video data revealed three kinds of knowledge that the teachers tested: factual knowledge, procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge However, there was a discrepancy between actual questioning practice and teacher beliefs regarding the type of knowledge that the teachers prioritised The teachers reported that they prioritised grammar points – a representation of conceptual knowledge – but in reality, they spent most of the class time eliciting bits of information from the materials, i.e factual knowledge When it came to practice, factual knowledge overtook conceptual knowledge probably because the teachers were influenced by the lesson objectives as found in the questionnaire data This elucidates why they would devote more efforts to enhance students’ acquisition of the information available in texts to complete tasks In addition, the teachers might have been driven by the fact that these students had passed a grammar-based university entrance examination in English and therefore they might not have 256 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 significant grammatical difficulties needing teachers’ intervention Of note, metacognitive knowledge was missing from their beliefs as well as practice Cognitive level Teachers’ beliefs Instead of referring to the cognitive levels previously mentioned, the teachers drew a simpler distinction between easy and difficult questions, as defined by Lan: ‘Easy questions not require students to think too hard, they just need to pick up the answers already given somewhere in the lesson or in the material.’ Teacher questions mostly tested students’ understanding and remembering ability With regard to higher order thinking, the concept of ‘critical thinking’ was mentioned by three quarters of the teachers, which fell into various cognitive dimensions in the revised taxonomy Analysing was the most frequently tested cognitive ability, as mentioned by eight teachers, which was used to foster students’ insights into different issues in the lesson through ‘how and why questions’ (Thi) Evaluating was ranked the second and was nominated by seven teachers, followed by applying which was noted by four teachers Creativity was mentioned only by Phi who wrote: ‘I prompt students’ cognitive thinking by analyzing, evaluating and creative questions.’ Nearly all teachers, as understood from their responses, decided on students’ targeted cognitive level based on their language proficiency and language performance These two factors, however, were commonly referred to as students’ level, as in the following response: ‘It depends on students’ level For low level, questions are for testing students’ memory and understanding For higher level, questions ask students for their more complex skills like analyzing, evaluating, etc.’ (Mai) In addition, lesson objectives and learning outcomes influenced the teachers’ decisions on students’ cognitive levels requiring further development Lan explained this relationship between lesson objectives and cognitive levels by observing: ‘At the end of the lesson, students are expected to enhance their understanding of subject content, creativity, critical thinking and retention ability Based on that, I develop their different cognitive levels.’ Moreover, students’ reactions to the lessons and their interactions with one another partially determined the cognitive levels that the teachers aimed at activating through questions Lastly, time allocation was also a consideration as one third of the teachers noted that when they were under time constraints, they usually ‘ask[ed] easy questions or just very few questions that require hard thinking’ (Anh) Actual practices Underlining the verbs in teacher questions and aligning them with the six levels of the cognitive dimension in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy helped determine which cognitive levels were being addressed by teacher questions The majority of teacher questions tested students’ ability to remember knowledge, which fell into both identifying and recognising categories The following excerpt provides good examples of indentifying questions: T: Alright, how about this group? Have you finished reading the second part of the text? Have you finished reading your part? S: Yes Teacher Development 257 T: Alright, so now I would like to hear from this group, ok? What did John with the money he inherited? Alright, I would like to hear from this lady You, ok? Ok, what did he with his money? Money he inherited? S: He T: What did he do? S: He gave a 100 thousand dollars to the political party in the South Australia Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 T: Right, so he donated it, right? Now this round, I would like to hear from you What did his brother with his money? The same amount of money? Ok, may I hear from your voice? Ok, what did his brother do? (Hai) Knowledge archived in students’ long-term memory was activated through recognising questions Teachers frequently checked the meaning of words that students may have known beforehand Thi’s questions to elicit the meaning of the word trendy serve as a good example: ‘Do you know this word? Trendy Like fashionable Là gì?’ (‘What is it?’ in Vietnamese) Moreover, students were pushed toward the level of understanding by a number of teacher questions which fell into the sub-classification of explaining In other words, students were asked to elaborate on their answers based on the material For example, Thanh asked her students to provide justification for their answers: T: Ok, number True or false? S: True T: Ok, true Ok, now why true? Tell me please Or, the teacher could be more direct on her quest for evidence, as can be seen from what Nga did in her class: ‘Can you tell me the evidence to support? A and B? Up in the air?’ The other common sub-category observed at the level of understanding was comparing, which means students were expected to detect correspondences between two ideas and objects For instance, students were asked to find differences between the words that referred to comparable concepts: ‘What are the differences? Van, truck, or lorry?’ (Ha) With regard to higher order thinking, five out of six teachers spent about the last 10 minutes inviting students to express their viewpoints on issues already discussed in the task Engagement in these post-task activities lifted students’ cognitive level to evaluating, as exemplified in the following conversation between Hai and her students: T: Alright, sure So a cleaner or hotel housekeeper, right? She found jewellery, expensive jewellery, right? And what did she do? She tried to return it Ok, so in your opinion, you think Do you think Did, Maria, the main character, the hotel housekeeper the right thing? You think so? Ss: Yes T: How many of you here think she did the right thing? If you were in her case, if you were in her shoes, what would you or you think Maria’s act was worthwhile or not? Ok, would you the same thing or would you act differently? 258 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 In this example, students were given an opportunity to apply their judgement and decide if the woman’s act was worthwhile This might enable them to develop their independent thinking and reflection Relationships between the two The teachers’ responses to the questionnaire emphasised students’ ability to understand the lesson content and remember the information with inadequate attention given to other cognitive levels However, classroom observation showed that the level tested the most was remembering probably because the teachers felt it necessary to ensure that students retained the input for assessment Understanding questions, which required students to explain their answers and compare between knowledge items in the lesson content, was the second most frequent item tested Thus, the teachers prioritised the two lowest levels in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Evaluative questions were frequently asked at the end of lessons to invite students’ personal opinions Contrary to their assertion in the questionnaire, the important cognitive levels such as applying, analysing, and creating were not observed in their classroom practice, attesting to the observation that students in these social contexts are given few opportunities to ‘make personal meaning out of information’ through higher order questions (Walsh and Sattes 2005, 33) Clarity of questions through lexis and syntax Teachers’ beliefs Nine of the thirteen teachers agreed that students would find it easier to comprehend questions if they were familiar with the words, as Trinh stated: ‘If there are too many new words, questions become incomprehensible and students can’t finish the task.’ Second, regarding the number of words, around three quarters of the teachers affirmed that questions should not be too long: ‘if the question is too long, students will be distracted’ (Thi) Then, with respect to register, more than half of the teachers reported that they moved between formal and informal language so that ‘students can both understand exactly what teachers want to express and enrich their academic language’ (Mai) With regard to syntax, nine teachers had a strict attitude towards grammatical errors in question formation For example, Hoa observed: ‘If the question is badly designed, students may not realise teacher’s intention when asking questions and teachers may lose a lot of power over their students.’ These beliefs about error-free questions might have been motivated by their perceptions of the role of teacher discourse in students’ L2 learning, as they posited that teacher questions should provide the model for learners For example, Lan stated: Questions act as guides/instructions to students, and guides/ instructions should be correct Students are able to notice the mistakes in the questions and may wonder over that Sometimes grammatical mistakes can change the content of the questions or affect students’ understanding of the questions The other participants also emphasised grammatical accuracy but they also took a tolerant stance towards grammatical errors observing that it was crucial to ‘convey the right meaning’ and ‘to make questions understandable to students’ (Phi) Teacher Development 259 Teachers who emphasised grammatically correct discourse probably did so with a firm belief that teachers should be a good model for students’ learning as illustrated in Lan’s response The rest of the participants possibly held a similar point of view but they seemed more tolerant because those minor mistakes were not likely to affect students’ learning outcomes, as Thi explained: Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 It is not necessary to have grammatically correct questions because they are just in oral form Moreover, university students should be aware that those mistakes are only made in spoken language, teachers will hardly ever make them in their writing Actual practices The teachers used between and 20 words in their questions Asking long questions, like the following one, was uncommon: ‘Just think if you are driving a car, what else you can be regarded as dangerous when you when you drive a car?’ (Ha) The question turned out to be long because of lexical redundancy Opposite to this extreme, one-word questions were asked more frequently, and they were likely to be effective in double-checking students’ responses, as in the following conversation: S: Satin T: What? S: Satin (Thi) Nevertheless, on average there were between six and eight words in a question and teachers tended to ask questions in a row Thanh, like her colleagues, often produced a series of medium-size questions targeting information in the reading text: ‘Ok, now, what about other rich people? What about other members of Impact group? What they want to with their money?’ Lexical redundancy made teacher questions appear rather complex However, students were often supported by embedded questions, as in the following example: T: And after deciding whether the statement is true or false What should you so that when you check the answer you will be sure that it is right? Should you circle the evidence for each statement? S: Yes (Thanh) Despite such efforts, if there were no responses from students, five of the six teachers switched to Vietnamese, an issue not raised in the questionnaire The following example best illustrates the point: ‘Moi người biết cách làm khơng _ nhỵ, moi người biết cách làm không? (Do you know how to deal with this _ kind of task, how to deal with this task?)’ (Hai) On the other hand, true to their intentions, the teachers formulated questions using simple syntax Three quarters of the questions were in the affirmative form with the teachers’ rising intonation at the end, for instance: ‘You understand what I mean?’ (Phi) Another kind of question commonly used was when teachers stopped mid-air so that students were prompted to give the answer by completing the sentence: 260 T: S: T: S: L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid We have (rising voice) Jeans and also ? (rising voice) Jogging trainers (Thi) Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Noticeably, when guiding students to complete tasks, nearly half of the questions asked fell into alternative questions (also known as ‘or’ questions) in which the possible answers were narrowed down, giving more clues to students In the following example, Thi saved class time by giving specific clues to students in the form of alternative questions: S: T: S: T: S: Narrow trousers Is it narrow trousers? Or shorts? Laugh Shorts or trousers? Shorts shorts Finally, with regard to grammaticality, although the majority of the teachers emphasised grammatical accuracy in theory, occasionally they deviated from strict grammatical rules in practice to scaffold students which made them appear empathetic to students: T: What the man say? S: He say that a little rain will not hurt T: He say that a little rain will not hurt Ok? I will play it [the CD player] again for you (Ha) Relationships between the two Apart from teachers’ strategic use of grammatical infelicities, which differed from their beliefs in grammaticality, teachers’ beliefs about wording and syntax seemed to be congruent with their actual practice since they tended to select familiar words and posed medium-size questions consisting of six to eight words Most of the time they used the informal mode of communication which made it easier for students to get involved Importantly, switching to Vietnamese was common teacher questioning, although this was not indicated in the survey Discussion and conclusions Although questioning in EFL practice can hardly be emphasised, in the literature teacher questioning strategies together with targeted cognitive levels and the type of knowledge prompted have been discussed in a rather disparate fashion (see Crowe and Stanford 2010; Lee 2006; Wu 1993) This study aimed to contribute to this literature by a detailed examination of beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices in questioning with respect to their purposes, content focus, cognitive level, and lexis and syntax in the Vietnamese context It also investi- Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Teacher Development 261 gated the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices given the demonstrated influence of the former on the latter Expectedly, the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their actual practices was complex which did not fall into a fixed pattern At a broad level, there was congruence between what the teachers thought and what they did in terms of lexis and syntax, content focus and targeted cognitive level However, a closer examination of each feature of quality questions produced significant discrepancies For instance, the questionnaire data indicated that the teachers first tested students’ conceptual knowledge and then factual and procedural knowledge In practice, however, they put conceptual knowledge behind the other two More importantly, the majority of the participants stated that they tested the levels of understanding followed by remembering before moving on to ‘critical thinking’ skills In reality, their priority was remembering followed by understanding and, on a limited scale, evaluating Significantly, no attention was given to analysing, applying and creating in practice Crucially, there was a substantial gap between what the teachers intended to and what they ended up doing with regard to the purposes of asking questions Although the teachers were guided by CLT, as understood from the survey, which aimed at encouraging student output and interaction, in practice, they followed, knowingly or unknowingly, the IRE pattern that left little opportunity for students to use the language In sum, then, these beginning EFL teachers, as Nga summarised, were yet to develop adequate questioning practice, particularly from a CLT point of view Although teacher beliefs not automatically translate into practice, investigation into teacher beliefs in the present study provided an opportunity to teachers to reflect on, articulate and give meanings to their practice But ultimately it is the actual practice which, although undeniably complex and messy, is more insightful because it provides the test case for the realisation of teacher beliefs, intentions and philosophies, setting the limits of what can be done and achieved Teacher practice in the present context generally deviated from what the teachers believed At the same time, their practices were too complex, extemporaneous, and situated to be pre-articulated in isolation from practice, complicating the relationship between beliefs and practice Despite this and notwithstanding the small scale of the investigation, we would argue that the study will contribute to the improvement of teacher questioning practices by encouraging them to reflect on their learned beliefs and their practices and judge for themselves whether they live by their beliefs and expectations in practice as they travel the difficult trajectory of their new teaching careers To equip them professionally, teacher development workshops can make them aware of the wide range of knowledge types and various cognitive levels in the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy so that they can boost students’ cognitive thinking by means of quality questions Moreover, to assist them to implement CLT and the notions of socio-cultural theory, training workshops can provide them with a bank of communicative activities and questioning strategies More importantly, the theoretical framework by Walsh and Sattes (2005) used in the present study can be useful to teaching practitioners as well as L2 classroom researchers It is also hoped that this study will encourage further research on questioning practices in L2 teaching and learning in different social contexts including Vietnam 262 L.N.K Pham and M.O Hamid Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the teachers who participated in our study despite their heavy workload We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and comments Notes on contributors Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14 04 October 2014 Ly Ngoc Khanh Pham teaches at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi She received an MA in TESOL from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2011 Her research interests include teacher training and teacher professional development She can be contacted at phkhanhly@gmail.com M Obaidul Hamid is Lecturer in TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, Australia His research focuses on the policy and practice of TESOL education in developing societies He has published his work in TESOL Quarterly, Current Issues in Language Planning, ELT Journal, Language Learning Journal, and Language, Culture and 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(What is it? What constitutes it? Does it affect students’ learning? If yes, how?) (4) How you prepare questions for your lessons? (In advance or spontaneously?/ How much time you spend on it? Do you write them down or prepare in your mind?/ Do your lesson plans include questions?) (5) What factors you take into consideration when preparing your questions? (E g., purposes, students’ cognitive level you aim to develop, wording and syntax, content focus, etc.) (6) What are your common purposes for asking questions? (7) Why you ask questions for those purposes? (How the instructional objectives of the institution and the course affect your purposes? Any other constraints that may affect the purposes of your questions?) (8) Which content you prioritize to focus on by asking questions? If you have more than one knowledge unit of priority, please put them in the order of importance (9) Which helps you to decide the content to focus on? (Are you using any framework to decide the content focus? If yes, please specify.) (10) What factors determine the cognitive levels of your questions? Do you follow any cognitive framework? (11) What cognitive level(s) are you testing your students the most often? (E.g., remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create, etc.) (12) How you develop students’ highest cognitive level? (13) What factors you take into consideration to choose words when formulating questions? (E.g., number of words in a question, meaning, colloquial or academic, etc.) (14) Do you think it is important to have grammatically correct questions? Why/ Why not? (15) How students’ individual differences (e.g students’ age, grade, achievement level, cultural background, etc) affect the way you formulate questions? (16) Do you have any further comments on your questioning practice? Please specify here  ... What are beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions? (2) How can we describe their actual questioning behaviours? (3) Are beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and. .. research on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and questioning practices, the study reported in this paper examined EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their actual questioning. .. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2012.753947 Beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices Ly Ngoc Khanh Phama and M Obaidul Hamidb* a Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 01:14